One of my two sons moved from Rochester, NY, to nearby Philadelphia and yet I’ve seen him no more often. A friend who invited me to dinner in early December is still hanging, waiting for me to pick a date I’ve not yet found.

I haven’t spent significant time with my grandchildren in months. Counting my blessings, I will skid to its end at nine p.m., my brain shredded from firing on all cylinders for so many non-stop hours. I need the income and I care to see the work of my talented clients through to fruition, so it will be another fifteen-hour day. My new reality: sometimes the sun will be low in the sky before I get to my paying work. As long as my day has already jumped its tracks, I’ll also post some promo to Twitter and Facebook. Since publication, this time is instead when I return interview questions or come up with marketing copy for upcoming talks or answer requests to meet with book clubs or get back to my publicist or draft a guest blog post because these things are needed now now now. sitting in a comfy chair by a sunny downstairs window reviewing work for one of my developmental editing clients. What I want to happen next but I don’t think happened once in March: to be home by two p.m.

Most importantly, we witness, so that published or not, we can say of each other with certainty: we are writers. Each member of our “Weggies” group is immersed in her own work, but because we cheat and peek at email now and then, we’ve been there for one another as we’ve received initial cover concepts, offers of representation, new rejections. The six other days of the week I commute up two flights of stairs to my loft office, but on Wednesdays I fight that monotony. Soon I’ll have the notes for my next novel spread around my laptop, and three to five writing friends will join me. Then I shower and, if it’s Wednesday, head to the local Wegman’s grocery store by eight to reserve a favorite set of tables near an outlet in the second floor Market Café. If it gets any later than six-thirty I worry that I’ll lose too much of the day and will probably skip it.

My goal is to get my feet moving in the direction of the gym, just one block away, before any part of my conscious mind argues that I don’t have time. Its artificial light completes the job of waking me as I free myself of notifications and emails, then check for new reviews at Goodreads and Amazon, tangible proof of the thrill that can still sneak up on me at any given point in the day: right now, somewhere, someone may be reading my debut novel. At least it feels that way, since it’s March, and at five a.m. After working so hard for publication I won’t let my book down now, I say. Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” On the first of each month, Catching Days hosts a guest writer in the series, “How We Spend Our Days.” Today, please welcome writer Kathryn Craft.

The art of falling kathryn craft